I entirely endorse Fiona Murphy's call for Sir Paul Stephenson to get his house in order. I share her experience of legal action against the police and Sir Paul's attack on wealthy lawyers plundering his forces coffers is, it seems to me, what one of his officers might call a "distraction punch".

With his budget under threat, this private lobbying of the home secretary looks like a high-visibility attempt to divert attention away from his more vulnerable areas of expenditure and to a favourite national bogeyman and alleged cost driver – the fat-cat lawyer. The annual cost to the Metropolitan police of all lawyers representing claimants is approximately £1.6m a year. While in isolation this sounds a lot, the Met spends significantly more on its own lawyers, approximately £6m a year. Figures from 2007 also show that the Met spends a huge £6.3m on it's Directorate of Public Affairs, which employs approximately 75 full-time staff and is responsible for press and public communications.

Sir Paul is right to be concerned about the costs of the Met. The Policing London annual report for 2008/9 puts the annual expenditure of the Met at £3.5bn, which represents nearly a third of the total national police expenditure, with workforce costs – including pensions and, of course, Sir Paul's salary of £280,489 – accounting for nearly 80% of that spend. Cuts to this huge budget are clearly required. I would suggest that the lobbyists and spin doctors are a good place to start.

There must also be questions about the value of the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), which is responsible for investigating complaints against Met officers. The annual salaries of this department are approximately £9m. Of the 10,849 complaints against Met officers made in 2009, the DPS upheld only 152 (0.015%). Put another way, the DPS are being paid £58,664.60 per complaint upheld. It is little wonder that victims of police misconduct have more faith in the civil courts criticising police officers than complaint investigators.

There can be little justification for spending a total of approximately £21m on the Met's legal, PR and professional standards departments.

Sir Paul should spend less money on trying to manage criticism in the media; require the professional standards department to be more robust in their investigations and the disciplining of officers so that those found guilty of misconduct would be less likely to offend again with the concomitant costs; and finally be more willing to acknowledge bad practice and ill-conceived operations. Most of the money paid to claimant lawyers is a direct result of the Met's legal department fighting cases that should never have been fought and which would have probably been avoided had a prompt apology and offer of compensation been made to the aggrieved at the outset.